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    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1950s
    Movies - 1950s Movies - H 2 Mins Read

    House Of Wax, The (1953)

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    As much a vehicle for a scenery-devouring Vincent Price as for the newfangled 3D process that would kick-start the 1950s craze, the Victorian horror shows of House of Wax had originally been brought to the screen some 20 years earlier by Casablanca director Michael Curtiz.

    houseofwax_001His 1933 film, Mystery of the Wax Museum (starring a pre-King Kong Fay Wray) had served as something of a technical experiment itself, employing as it did a short-lived advancement in the two-colour Technicolor process, spearheaded by Warner Bros.

    Transposing the action from London to New York, there’s plenty of lurid fun to be had following Price’s murderous sculptor as he rebuilds his waxwork collection out of the cadavers of the recently (and not quite) deceased.

    Featuring an early role for one Charles Buchinsky (later Charles Bronson) as Igor, House of Wax may be best known for its use of 3D but impresses more in its vivid use of colour.

    The moment Price’s waxen mask falls apart to reveal the disfigured night stalker underneath still looks terrific 60-odd years on, and certainly superior to anything that appears in a third iteration that arrived (and promptly vanished) in 2005.

    Professor Henry Jarrod
    Vincent Price
    Lieutenant Tom Brennan
    Frank Lovejoy
    Sue Allen
    Phyllis Kirk
    Cathy Gray
    Carolyn Jones
    Scott Andrews
    Paul Picerni
    Matthew Burke
    Roy Roberts
    Mrs Andrews
    Angela Clarke
    Sidney Wallace
    Paul Cavanagh
    Sergeant Jim Shane
    Dabbs Greer
    Igor
    Charles Buchinsky (Bronson)
    Barker
    Reggie Rymal
    Leon Averill
    Ned Young
    Bruce Alison
    Philip Tonge
    Ma Flanagan
    Riza Royce

    Director
    André de Toth

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